AVENGERS: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES Season One Reviews

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (2010) – Season 1, 26 episodes.

I reviewed AVENGERS: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES in a series of 6 separate reviews, which are all included below. Needless to say, AVENGERS: EMH is a fantastic cartoon, one of the very best animated superhero efforts. I’ve assembled (ha, I’m hilarious) them all here to kick off AVENGERS MONTH! Because, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s an AVENGERS movie coming out this Friday, directed by Joss Whedon. I hear it’s got the kids excited. If it’s half as good as the rest of the world has been telling us for the past two weeks, I might have to see it two or three or ten times.

THE AVENGERS: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES REVIEW COLLECTION:

1. The Micro Episodes (chronologically, Episodes 1-5): “The Micro Season All Pieced Together”
2. Episodes 6 & 7: “How Many Villains Can You Stuff Inside a Story?”
3. Episodes 8 & 9: “He Brings Shame to All Monkeys with His Cowardice”
4. Episodes 10-14: “Like a Frost Giant’s Head on an Infant’s Body”
5. Episodes 15-19: “You Came to Fight Me, Avengers? Here. I. Am.”
6. Episodes 20-26: “I Mean, Seriously, They’re Supervillains! You Just Hit Them!”

THE INCREDIBLE HULK (AND SHE-HULK): Darkness and Light in the 1996 Animated Series

The Incredible Hulk (Season 1) and She-Hulk (Season 2) – 2 seasons, 21 episodes – Starring Neal McDonough, Lou Ferrigno, Genie Francis, Luke Perry, John Vernon, Matt Frewer, Mark Hamill, Shadoe Stevens, and Cree Summer.

The 1996 animated show THE INCREDIBLE HULK is one of those shows that doggedly refuses to succumb to awfulness. There is a lot to like here and every time I want to knock the show down a few pegs for Matt Frewer’s ridiculously exaggerated vocal work for the Leader, or for Mark Hamill’s ridiculously exaggerated vocal work for the Gargoyle, or for the decision to include the ridiculous super hero costume for Doc Samson, the story ends up pulling the show back to make it a rather enjoyable effort.

At least for season 1. But more on that in a bit.

The Hulk is a rather hard character to have star in a TV show for kids, given his dark, destructive nature. Combine this with the often depressive, manic, “I don’t want to keep turning into the character you’re all turning in to see” Bruce Banner character, and it can be a tough sell to keep people coming back. I don’t think it’s a coincidence (though it would be going too far to say it’s a given) that the most popular HULK storyline in the comics in recent years has been the PLANET HULK storyline where Banner was absent. (They turned this story into a movie of the same name.)

The makers of THE INCREDIBLE HULK do a good job keeping this story interesting, and the show plays out like one long story.

At least for season 1. But more on that in a bit.

Right from the start, the Hulk is cast as a misunderstood monster who only attacks people when they attack him first. This is the “HULK SMASH!” Hulk, and he’s got allies in Betty Ross (Genie Francis), Rick Jones (Luke Perry), and Doc Samson (Shadoe Stevens) and enemies in General Thunderbolt Ross (John Vernon), Major Glen Talbot (Kevin Schon), and the Hulkbusters. What works is when all of these pieces are put into motion together because it enables us to see not only Bruce as a victim but the Hulk as one, too.

This is not high literary storytelling by any stretch, of course. It’s a kids’ show, and so a good deal of the drama here skids over into melodrama territory. Characters make larger pronouncements than the situation really requires – a constant reinforcement that kids need more than adults.

HULK works best when the producers give the storylines room to grow, such as they do with the series opener “Return of the Beast,” a 2-part story that introduces the major players. Thankfully, the show doesn’t start with an origin episode. We get a Hulk that’s young enough in his career that Rick Jones still wears the same outfit he did the day Bruce saved him and became the Hulk (literally the same outfit), but not so long that people in Canada have heard of him, mistakenly calling him a Sasquatch. The season ends with a 3-part story called “Darkness and Light” that sees the season-long quest of Bruce to rid himself of the Hulk come to fruition thanks to Betty and Samson.

In between, we watch Bruce (Neal McDonough) chase down scientist after scientist to ask for help, which leads to guest shots from Tony Stark/Iron Man and James Rhodes/War Machine, Walter Langkowski/Sasquatch, and the Thing (the rest of the FF isn’t home). This would get old, so the producers wisely have other guest stars come looking for either the Hulk or Bruce, including Ghost Rider and Dr. Don Blake/Thor, and then some random appearances from the likes of Dr. Doom and Wendigo. It’s a good mix of characters and most of them are used well.

The main villain of season 1 is the Leader, with Gargoyle as Lackey #1 and Abomination as Lackey #2. It’s a solid technique to have this backbone of villainy to work with through the season because it gives the show three separate alpha-male led camps: Hulk, General Ross, and the Leader. Midway through the first season, Bruce heads to Washington, D.C. to meet up with his cousin Jen. One Doctor Doom intrusion later and Jen Walters has become the She-Hulk.

The inclusion of the She-Hulk is a marked improvement over the inclusion of Rick Jones. For one, it puts someone closer to the Hulk’s level to hang with, and Shulkie’s bright, outgoing personality is a better fit in the show than Rick’s concerned whining. (Rick is not helped by having the voice of Luke Perry, who is just not the right match for this character.)

She-Hulk is such a good fit that she gets co-billing in the second season. UPN ordered this move, as well as a lightening of the overall tone.

Which sort of makes you wonder if they’d ever heard of the Hulk.

Anyway, the second season is largely a disaster. She-Hulk’s personality gets a bit grating after a while. It’s too much ego and too little fun. The episodes become largely stand-alone, and while we get a decent appearance from Dr. Strange, and while we do get some nice bits from the Mr. Fixit, everything is a clear step back from the previous season. We do get some resolution on the Thunderbolt/Hulk issue in the last episode, but on the whole, season 2 is a disappointment. Things like Gargoyle’s attraction to She-Hulk is kinda funny in season 1, but aggravating in season 2.

I was pleasantly surprised with season 1 of THE INCREDIBLE HULK, however, with the high points of the show overcoming the low points. Compared to the disappointing SILVER SURFER cartoon produced in 1998, HULK does a much better job handling a dark, less-than-heroic character. There’s plenty here to get annoyed about (for some reason it irks me that Banner and Better both have the bodies of supermodels) but you can see the overall attempt is a good one. Yeah, you might want to punch Rick Jones every time he shows up on the screen, but Betty’s drive, determination, and loyalty more than overcome it.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK is a good cartoon.

At least for season 1.

G.I. JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO: THE M.A.S.S. DEVICE: Duke Secretly Wishes Snake Eyes Had Stayed Dead

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: The M.A.S.S. Device (1983) – The first G.I. Joe animated miniseries from Sunbow/Marvel.

The G.I. JOE cartoon from the mid-1980s, along with the TRANSFORMERS, dominated my after school TV time, and this is where it all began.

THE M.A.S.S. DEVICE is a five-episode miniseries and it’s completely fantastic. These miniseries quickly devolved into campiness, but here at the start we’ve got a relatively straight-forward story about a terrorist organization, the U.S. military unit created to stop them, and billions and billions of dollars worth of toys. And no, I don’t mean all the toys Hasbro sold off these cartoons, I mean the billions and billions of dollars of resources it took for G.I. Joe and Cobra to build all of these weapons and vehicles they trot around the globe in. Each side has massive headquarters, planes, tanks, laser rifles, and weapons of mass destruction.

Cost is no object when you’re hand drawn.

The plot of M.A.S.S. DEVICE centers on a satellite that Cobra steals from the United States military with their, well, their M.A.S.S. Device. Duh. (It stands for Molecular Assembled Scrambler Sender. I think. Destroy says, “My invention will seize the molecules of the Relay Star satellite, assemble them for transportation, scramble them into a coherent beam of pure energy, and send them here to us!”) It’s a clever bit of espionage and ingenuity, as Cobra has the Baroness infiltrate the U.S. military installation by doing the whole Mission: Impossible rubber mask bit. The original plan is that the Baroness will get close enough to the satellite to have Destro use the MASS Device to teleport the satellite out, but when that fails, he teleports Cobra forces in.

And then teleports them and the satellite back out, with the added bonus of capturing Duke in the process.

I like that how no matter how ridiculous the plot gets – the Joes have to battle giant snake lizards and rescue a meteorite from an active volcano – the story plays it all mostly seriously. Even the Joes still largely look like military men at this stage in their development. Most of these outfits look like they could be military-issue, and most of these characters (Joes like Short-Fuze, Steeler, Clutch, and Zap) are only slightly distinguishable from one another. There’s all sorts of mini-missions that fill the action quotient for each episode and they all come with very real stakes.

After surviving a Cobra ambush and rescuing the original creator of the M.A.S.S. Device, the Joes have to go off on missions to gather each of the three elements needed to power the machine. Each of the missions is, of course, designed to show off different Joes and different equipment in order to make us want to buy different toys. First up, the Joes head to the Arctic to get some radioactive crystals and they fail to get them.

Wait, what?

Yeah, they lose. At least temporarily, and that temporary setback is part of what makes all of this seem real. The Joes come out on the worse end of conflicts several times, and so when Snake Eyes has to sacrifice himself to save the Joes from radiation it feels like a real sacrifice.

He gets better, of course, and M.A.S.S. DEVICE does a great job creating several smaller subplots to support the main action. When Duke gets captured during Cobra’s theft of the Device he becomes Cobra’s slave and gets put in a Roman-style arena to fight for his life against a giant slave that might have a name but he doesn’t have an action figure. (I think. I never owned it, let alone saw it.) He’s a slave, too, and the brother of a female slave that has the hots for Duke. She helps him escape and he gives her a ring to remember him by until he returns.

Which he would do sooner if he didn’t get temporary amnesia.

Yeah, there’s plenty of small moments like this throughout M.A.S.S. DEVICE which happen because the story needs them to happen to have things play out like they do. If Duke remembers right away where Cobra’s headquarters are, then we miss two entire episodes. Of course, Cobra’s headquarters are a huge freaking castle built on a mountain, and everyone knows where they rescued him from, but still, they can’t find it.

Whatever, they’ve got giant deep sea tube worms to fight as they look for a pool of heavy water. The Joes and Cobra form a temporary alliance because the tube worms are that bad-ass, and they both leave with some of the heavy stuff. Then the Joes head home for a pleasant surprise:

Snake Eyes is alive. And he’s got a pet wolf. Everyone is happy about this, of course, except for Duke. Now, Duke doesn’t come out and say, “Dang, that silent jerk is back,” but while Scarlett runs to him with tears in his eyes and the other Joes gather around him, Duke stays with the scientist. You can definitely see the vaguest hint of a romantic triangle here as Scarlett shows an emotional attachment to both Duke and Snake here, a triangle that we see resolved in a similarly understated, but pointed, manner in RESOLUTE.

Things start to fall apart a bit in episode 4 when the Joes and Cobra go after the meteorite. They end up playing a game of keep away with the giant meteor – yeah, keep away with a giant meteor over a volcano with planes and nets and … ugh. It’s a bit silly. The sequence redeems itself when Cobra captures the meteor and the Joes mount a flying raid on Cobra’s massive aircraft carrier in the sky. Scarlett ends up taking on Destro and getting captured, but she’s no damsel in distress. The interplay between her and Destro on his getaway plane in some of the best in the entire series as she verbally attacks him even when tied up, even when they’re spiraling to what seems like their inevitable death.

M.A.S.S. DEVICE ends with a bang as the Joes raid the Cobra stronghold. It’s a great battle and a great ending to a really well-made, enjoyable action-packed miniseries.